Tuesday, May 27, 2008

I risked my blood pressure this afternoon and read this comment thread at the home base.

About the only thing that saved me from an aneurysm was commenter shah8. What I noted was that Turkana's reply was openly hostile and demeaning from the beginning, despite the commenter's initial civility.

Unfortunately shah8 finally got equally hostile, but there's a lesson here in what passes for conversation at The Left Coaster these days. Don't bother unless you can manage the slings, arrows, insults, and later pedophilia allegations thrown at you by what used to be the leading posters.

12 comments:

Ya, Id, I pulled this post down before clicking post and then saved it in case I changed my mind and still felt like yelling at him:

eRiposte, other than proving that an entire post can be written in nothing but sarcasm (which is getting extremely old btw) your posts have long since ceased to do anything productive.

They do not serve any purpose except to further split the Democratic Party.

You took an issue sacrosanct to the Democratic Party and turned it into a partisan issue for Hillary Clinton. This is not Clinton’s issue – it is all of ours and you have turned it into something dirty, something divisive…our Party simply cannot take anymore of this.

A few weeks ago a poster commented..."I was on the fence between Clinton and Obama until I found TLC and started reading eRiposte's posts, and now I will do everything that I can to make sure that Obama is defeated in November."

I cannot imagine that this makes you feel good, eRiposte. Is this really what you set out to do when you started writing on TLC?

I doubt that your desire was this. I remember the work that you did on behalf of the Party. It now appears, however, that you have mistaken Hillary Clinton for the Party. Or, worse, your devotion to one person has superseded that of devotion to the Democrats and what it is that our Party can do for this Country when we work together.

In your extreme, blind, partisanship you have succeeding in assisting to perpetuate myths, as though they were facts, and offered people self-righteous excuses on how breaking this Party (and therefore this Country) are good things.

This Country has slid into a remnant of what we once were - so close to Fascism that we all feel it breathing down our necks. We cannot afford a McCain Administration.

And please spare me the “I know how important this election is and I will support whoever the nominee is,” crap; it has gone too far for that.

A line was crossed a long time ago and I fear that we will never come back from this. The balkanization of the Democratic Party is now formed in stone – the wall increases with every pebble thrown from the blogs and some posts are boulders.

This is not about Clinton. This is not about Obama. This is much bigger than either one of them and you lost sight of this purpose some time ago.

You have a lot more power than you might think and you have become dangerous. You are condoning and encouraging hatred. That you do not see this is even more dangerous.

I frankly do not care anymore about the nomination - I care about our Party. This division is detrimental.

People come to your comment threads and spew hatred back and forth and any kind of actual conversation has long since been gone. We are all coming with our own set of facts, the truth is somewhere in the middle, but we are perpetuating division rather than celebrating the wealth of talent that our Party has. We have done more damage than the Republicans ever could have.

It is up to us to stop this people. It is also up to us to call out this partisan crap for what it is. Dangerous.

I hope that we, commenters, stop it as well. It would be helpful to all of us if we started to a) speak positively of the Dem candidate that is not our favorite and b) turn the partisanship towards John McCain.

It is time for healing and it needs to start with each of us. We have a lot of power as well and we need to heal this Party.

First, do no harm should be your motto...perhaps you will take a look and see what your motto has become.

It's insane. Did anyone catch a previous comment thread by Steve on his obsessive need for a tier 1-tier2 campaign strategy? I snarkily agreed, stating that maybe if all those evil bad nasty subversively attacking Obama surrogates heaping on Hillary actually existed, that Obama could launch a two tier strategy immediately.

I personally am tired the shit flung from both sides that result in hurt feelings.

It's frustrating to lose friends because people never take it as it was intended. Apologies will never work because it wasn't worded perfectly. Its always living up to a double standard in someone's life.

Most of it is the toxic effect of the race/gender dispute as far as I'm concerned. I proclaimed early on, if this campaign devolved into the race/gender issue, all the important questions facing America will not be answered. Disclaimer: Of course this is not to say that race/gender issue aren't important, it's just I still think that they are not the most important problems we currently face.

No matter what... It's a no win situation! Which in turn, makes all of America losers!!

"but there's a lesson here in what passes for conversation at The Left Coaster these days. Don't bother unless you can manage the slings, arrows, insults, and later pedophilia allegations thrown at you by what used to be the leading posters."

Idio, I finally gave up on TLC. I am not interested in fighting and there is no longer room there for people like me. TLC has lost the focus on the important issues to play the game of mine is bigger than yours. Sad.